Hello, long time lurker just now posting! Wanted to say thanks for all the awesome information and advice I see on here! I am just getting started and have commited myself to trying to do the 500 Day War once I end training and transition to full time. I believe cold calling, long hours, hard work and persistence can go a long way in this industry. I did want to augment all the cold calling with some warm leads from Linkedin and was wondering what kind of success people have had using that for prospecting? My plan is to work Mon-Fri on the phones and use the weekends to build up a list of leads via Linkedin to hit during the next week. Any advice would be appreciated...

If you are just starting out, I would strongly suggest to not use linkedin or any other social media. Here is why. That is not the target you want. The individual that you want are not going to check linkedin and probably don’t even have it updated. For example, Amber above has an active page but its just for branding. The movers and shakers you want to attract are going to do the same thing. While it might help to get leads to “cold call” the rate of cold calling is horrible. For someone new in the industry, you might have a 1-2 percent close rate on your “actual” reach rate of a decision maker which will probably be less then 15 percent.

So mathmatically speaking you for every 1000 dials you will reach 150 people and out of that you will close 2 (we will round up from 1.5). Not horrible and if you have the time, good luck!

I would strongly advice spending your time more wisely in a civic organization (rotary or kiwanis to name a few) and go to a lot community activities. Also leverage every client you do get with this, “I trust you have found our talk to be of value, can you think of anyone in your (put a personal phase, i.e. company/work out group) that would benefit from a talk?” Use a contexts when asking for referrals because when you ask for “anyone” they will say, not off the top of my head. Narrow down their thinking and you will also get more clients like the one you have now. This will start to form a “target market” which is how you build a lot faster. You want to be known as the “guy/girl that helps all the small business owners in town”.

You are not going to gain much traction building your lists by lurking Linked IN. Analysis paralysis will usually take up your time; and you will not be focusing on the really important thing. The important thing is to make the dials with as many numbers as you can get. The more recent the source of the numbers, the better and having a good DNC scrubbing system is critical. No one can tell you that the cold call rate in the industry is terrible. It’s not. I’m a testament to that. It’s how I built my business. 400 dials will get you a client. It’s that simple. That’s the average in a wire house - and when I say wire house client - I am using the metric of 250k - throwing away the small fish. Smaller people will lower the number of calls. 100 dials yields someone who will talk with you who is qualified (100 - 250k today). 400 dials yields you a client in the next few months if your closing ratio is 25%. Period. I’ve done it for years; coach people all the time and can’t honking believe there are still people on this board telling people not to call.

Buy a list or build one from a directory that just lists numbers. Don’t contemplate, don’t try to find the connections via linked in or social media. Dial - meet people, get to know them. When they feel you know them -they are yours.

You are not going to gain much traction building your lists by lurking Linked IN. Analysis paralysis will usually take up your time; and you will not be focusing on the really important thing. The important thing is to make the dials with as many numbers as you can get. The more recent the source of the numbers, the better and having a good DNC scrubbing system is critical. No one can tell you that the cold call rate in the industry is terrible. It’s not. I’m a testament to that. It’s how I built my business. 400 dials will get you a client. It’s that simple. That’s the average in a wire house - and when I say wire house client - I am using the metric of 250k - throwing away the small fish. Smaller people will lower the number of calls. 100 dials yields someone who will talk with you who is qualified (100 - 250k today). 400 dials yields you a client in the next few months if your closing ratio is 25%. Period. I’ve done it for years; coach people all the time and can’t honking believe there are still people on this board telling people not to call.

Buy a list or build one from a directory that just lists numbers. Don’t contemplate, don’t try to find the connections via linked in or social media. Dial - meet people, get to know them. When they feel you know them -they are yours.

From our experience, we have found advisers need to have a good mix of all marketing strategies, including social media. A lot of advisers have learned that social media helps keep you in front of current clients and help them to learn more about you. In gaining new clients, writing small blog posts or sharing articles on social media helps show your credibility. Social media needs to be tended to weekly in order to gain any traction. If you want more info, feel free to email [email protected]

There’s a right and a wrong way to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn will help you to stay top-of-mind. For prospecting, LinkedIn CAN work if you do it the right way. For example, if you filter for your target market, or if you prospect for people who recently changed jobs (so you can do rollovers, etc.). I do agree that cold calling is one of the best ways to build your business, but if it’s 10:00 p.m. and you want to put some extra work in, LinkedIn is the place to go.

There’s a right and a wrong way to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn will help you to stay top-of-mind. For prospecting, LinkedIn CAN work if you do it the right way. For example, if you filter for your target market, or if you prospect for people who recently changed jobs (so you can do rollovers, etc.). I do agree that cold calling is one of the best ways to build your business, but if it’s 10:00 p.m. and you want to put some extra work in, LinkedIn is the place to go.

For social media advertising I suggest Facebook. You can target prospects by their income, location, even the type of car they drive. There’s so many options.

You only pay for the amount of people that see your ad (If you target correctly, these will be specific types of people) and the amount of people you can reach compared to LinkedIn/Coldcalling is immense. (Almost everyone uses Facebook)

I have a thread I posted a guide on how to use Facebook for generating high quality leads, but it hasn’t seemed to have posted yet. I wrote a free guide going in depth on how to set up a dependable lead generation system for financial planners, so if you’d like a free copy - send me a PM and I’d be glad to give you a download link.